Films that allow the possibility that a man might wrestle with real feelings are thin on the ground, so the flaws in this Australian feature - a tendency towards treacly sentiment; an overly lush score; and an excessive running time - are balanced by the emotional generosity of its central idea.
Director Monahan (The Interview; Peaches), who co-wrote the occasionally plodding screenplay, based the central premise on fact: a programme in which low-risk prisoners in Victoria worked on rehabilitating injured birds of prey in a local sanctuary.
Weaving plays a case-worker at Won Wron, a prison without walls in the countryside, who takes charge of a new inmate, a sullen and simmering Iranian called Victor (Hany). Admitting him to the raptor programme is the beginning of a long rehabilitation.
The arc of the story is predictable and it is predictably handled, as Victor confronts the demons of his past, including a son who has disowned him. And the screenplay milks for all its worth the symbolic potential of birds with broken wings learning to fly free; some scenes are driven by cinematic rather than narrative logic.
The prison kingpin (Hayes) is more plot device than character, too.
